


Glowing

by Eloquy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Fluff, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Pre Study in Pink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:09:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloquy/pseuds/Eloquy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't talk about it. They don't need to. It's just a sheep and not even a real one. But it's theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glowing

**Author's Note:**

> Before you start reading this, you might want to look at [this](http://bit.ly/Ojz6uT).  
> It'll make sense in a moment.

 

 

He notices it. He doesn't say a word about it, of course, but he notices. Sherlock does too. But the case is too much of a nasty one, and far too time-sensitive, to talk about tiny plastic sheep glued to a wall.

Moments after, when the UV lights are on, Greg discovers that the sheep also glow in the dark. Sherlock discovers some DNA on one of the cacti on the windowsill.  
They rush off and no more thoughts are given to the sheep.

 

Later, when a little girl is returned safely and mostly unharmed to her mother, and Sherlock has that smile on his face, the one that isn’t quite as smug as it is content, a little hand tugs at Greg’s scarf. As he glances down, he is handed one of the little sheep, freshly plucked of the wall, with a bit of tape still hanging of it. An almost inaudible “Thank you” is uttered, but it’s nothing next to the gratitude showing in the wide green eyes of the little girl.

Just before he puts the sheep in his pocket, she points a finger at it, and then at Sherlock who is in the far corner of the room, discussing details with Anderson. Greg chuckles and reassures her solemnly: “I’ll give it to him.”

He knows she is too intimidated to go herself. He understands.

 

Sherlock refuses to take the sheep, insisting that Greg should keep it. That he is the one who is good with people. The one who cares about these things.

Greg reluctantly yields and puts it in the drawer of his bedside table. He never considers it its own. It’s someone else’s light.

 

\--

 

And then, Sherlock gets kicked out of his flat, which is not surprising, really, considering what he gets up to in there. So Greg takes him in. Not that he really has choice, mind you, since Sherlock is sitting on the pavement in front of his flat, with an incredible pile of cardboard boxes around him and a kicked-puppy look on his face. So he helps him carry his stuff up, hands him some clean sheets and propels him towards the sofa.

 

For the first time in a while, Greg doesn't feel lonely when he goes to sleep.

For the first time at all, he also realizes that Sherlock, for all his bravado and cold attitude, is still very much human. And humans have nightmares.

That night, he gets up more than once, woken by muffled cries, and tries to offer as much comfort as he can. But he doesn't know what the nightmares are about, and Sherlock doesn't say anything other than “All is fine”, and it makes things much more difficult.

The fourth time he pads into the living-room, a concerned look on his face, he is ordered back to his room by a scathing “Stop trying to coddle me.” The words would hurt if they didn’t hold so much hidden frustration and distress. __

The morning after, they don't talk about it. Greg is fighting with the coffee machine until Sherlock intervenes, and then, they are too busy enjoying the calm silence of the early hour to break it with words.

  
But when the nightmares become a regular occurrence, and days turn into weeks, Greg also realizes that they never talk about the important stuff. They discuss cases for hours, swap theories and argue over evidence, but never wander in that minefield that are emotions and feelings. He figures that they don't really need it. Sherlock does what he does best; he deduces them and files them away. Greg just feels them, whether it's his own or others', and, most of the time, can't think of words appropriate enough to describe them.

So when he finds the little sheep again and, in a sudden inspiration, sticks it to the ceiling above the sofa, Sherlock acts as he doesn't notices it.

  
  


He doesn't know if it's just the soft glow of the little animal, or the idea that it was put there by someone who cares, but the nightmares recede slightly. They don't stop, but Greg, and mostly Sherlock, can now go for a few nights without being woken up.

 

 

If he ever thought himself a bit stupid for sticking the sheep to the ceiling, Sherlock levels that ground a few weeks later. One evening, he comes home from the Yard a bit earlier than usual and finds the detective perched on a chair, sticking more sheep above the sofa. They look at each other for a few seconds, Sherlock fiddling with the small piece of plastic, Greg trying his best to suppress the fond smile that threatens to creep on his face, until he excuses himself and goes to the kitchen to fix the dinner.

Sherlock skips the meal and stays in the living-room, while Greg eats distractedly over some paperwork, glancing towards the door from time to time, afraid he messed things up a bit. But then, hands snatch the files away and he is pushed out of the kitchen into what seems complete darkness, except for a multitude of glowing little silhouettes. They sit on the couch and look at the swirling patterns Sherlock created. Forgoing any conventional representation of stars and constellations, although Greg discerns the Big Dipper in a corner, he went for mesmerizing motifs colliding with each other, almost managing to give an impression of motion to the whole.

 

They stay there, in silence, for the best part of the night. When the glowing lights starts to fade and Greg reluctantly gets up to go to bed, murmuring a soft “Sleep well”, he sees Sherlock flicking on a torch and lighten the sheep just above him. It glows with renewed force when the detective lies down on the sofa, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

 

\--

 

After a few months of late-night arguments and take-away, successful and failed experiments and just comfortable companionship, Sherlock finds a rather nice flat near Regent's Park and moves out, gaining a flatmate in the process. The sheep stay. Except for one. The first one. That one, Greg knows, is at the bottom of one of those brown boxes that goes away in the cab promoted to moving van, but he won't mention it to Sherlock. He is the rightful owner, after all.

He leaves, and the flat is empty once again.

 

He could go back to feeling lonely, but he doesn't. The leftover sheep help him to remember that the first one, the most important of the flock, is somewhere out there, glowing, and that feels good.  
He ends up sleeping in the sofa more often that is possibly good for his back, but it's also there that he gets the most rest.

And then, one Sunday, deciding that enough is enough, he moves the sheep to his bedroom's ceiling. Both his back and mind are happy with the arrangement.

 

 

\--

 

 

As can be expected, when Sherlock lets himself in one evening, he notices the move. As usual, no word is said on this matter.

What is less usual is that no word is said at all.

Somehow, they both end on Greg’s bed, staring at the shining dots. A soft voice, barely louder than the murmur of passing cars, and so at odds with the brutal events it describes, tells about a pool, explosives and fear.

Greg holds, and shushes, and reassures. But later, when he is asked not to die, ever, he can’t bring himself to promise something so big. Still, an answer is expected and he manages a sincere “Only if you don’t.”

They fall asleep under shared light.

 

\--

 

 

The next time he sees the sheep, Sherlock’s one, it's not where he thought it would be. He has dropped by Baker Street, wanting a second opinion on a case, but the detective is nowhere to be found. What he finds, however, is an army doctor in the middle of his room, surrounded by dozens of similar-looking socks and a desperate look on his face.

John rambles for a bit, exposing the dangers of living with a flatmate when it comes to sorting out the laundry, but stops when he notices that Greg hasn't said a word and is looking rather blankly at the wall.

The wall to which is glued a small piece of plastic that looks terribly like the one that was trusted into one detective's hand by a little girl, years before.

 

John, of course, is not Sherlock, and he feels the need to explain. To excuse. Maybe even to diminish its importance. He does it with a bit of a self-deprecating smile, which is just there to hide the embarrassment. He recalls how he found the little sheep on his wall, a few days after they came back from Baskerville. The same few days were he nearly lost his mind, unable to get any sleep, the images of the explosion burnt on his eyelids.

He knows Sherlock put it there, although he ignores where he got it from. He hasn't asked, and anyway, he is not sure Sherlock would tell.

 

Greg stands there, not sure if he should nod, or say something, or explain to John, so he smiles a bit tightly and stays silent. The lump in his throat plays a great part in his decision.

 

And then, John changes the subject, grabs the stack of files from Greg's arms and assures him he will force Sherlock to look at them as soon as he deigns to re-appear. Greg manages a “Thank you” and gets out, taking a few deep breaths of dirty London air when he has closed the door behind him.

He goes home with the conviction that his great man has become a good one, and he feels more than a little proud about that.

 

He knows it shows when he sees Sherlock next. Of course, he is glad that the case is solved with minimum damage, but there is more than that in the gentle squeeze he gives to the detective's shoulder. Sherlock detects it. Feels it, if he goes by the unexpectedly warm smile he is offered in return.

 

\--

 

 

Sherlock falls. And it's brutal. Traumatic.

Not entirely unexpected, though. There have been bombs and phones. Uneasy glances and avoided touches. Kidnappings and rumours.

 

Rumours he had to hear and investigate, even if he didn't believe them. Because it's Sherlock, and he doesn't do that. He doesn't leave kids in the dark. Hell, he doesn't leave anyone in the dark when he is around. He does what he always does. He sheds light. Harsh, hurting light in corners that’d rather stay in the shadows. And sometimes it hurts, but who are they to judge, as most of the time, it helps.

 

But he falls. The press asserts “jumps” and claims “fake”, Mycroft's eyes confirm “unexpected”, Molly murmurs “broken neck and smashed face” while pushing him gently away from the morgue, and John... Well, John doesn't say a single thing, which is to be expected.

 

He loses track, loses sleep for a few days. Nothing makes sense anymore.

 

And then he is in the cemetery, carrying a coffin on his right shoulder, and the only thing he can think of is that the sharp corner hurts. He's not quite sure what he should feel apart from that.

He can only see devastated faces all around, and he wonders idly if he sports the same expression on his own. He wonders if it's the reason Sally is looking at him with so much pity in her eyes. He also wonders if he is crying, because it seems to be the thing to do in such occasions, but realizes that apart from that wooden corner digging into his shoulder, he is not really aware of what his body is doing.

 

He just knows he is walking. Letting himself fall forward and waiting for his other foot to catch up. Catch him. Only to start all over again. We never think about it, he notices. How every step is a leap of faith. How we allow ourselves to plunge forward and blindly trust our brain to catch us up in time. To send the right message to the right muscle to move the right part, just there to break the programmed fall.

It's what Sherlock did, take a step.

But this is where Greg fails to understand, because Sherlock should have known that his brain wouldn't break the fall. It couldn't do anything. It was not a matter of muscle and blood any more, but a matter of physics and gravity. And the brain would have known that.

 

So Greg is left wondering why, after all these years, Sherlock chose to distrust his brain. What was important enough to overrule it. Why he took a leap of faith so big that he objectively knew he would not, could not, survive it. He can't find an adequate answer to that.

 

And then, he stops walking, and thinking, and wondering, because John is there, staring down at that dark opening in the ground.

He’s there, and he is silent, but he also is clutching something in his hand, and one second before he throws it on top of the coffin, Greg knows that it's the little glowing sheep.

 

It’s swallowed by the dark soil and Greg remembers what he should feel.

 

\--

 

He tears all the remaining sheep from the bedroom’s ceiling, long after they have stopped glowing. Long after he has thrown the torch away from him, unable to recreate the light, unable to bring back the memories.

The darkness is almost better.

 

He knows he has to go on. Knows that blinds need to be opened and a fridge needs to be restacked. Knows that phones and emails have been asking for answers for days, and that consequences need to be dealt with.

He has no idea how.

 

The bin bag feels heavy when he takes it outside.

Not as heavy as the box of belongings he carries when he exits Scotland Yard, sent on administrative leave.

 

Darkness has stopped being better.

But he doesn't see the end of it.

 

\--

 

Months later, he is sitting on a bench in Hyde Park, following the slow swim of the ducks on the Serpentine.  
A letter in his pocket says in complicated terms that he can keep his job, though under certain conditions.

He’s not sure he wants it anymore.

 

A little girl sits next to him, throwing bits of her sandwich in the water. She ignores him. Ducks are more important.

He thinks so as well.

 

When she leaves, there is a scraped, muddy, plastic sheep on the bench.

When he leaves, it’s not there anymore, but held tightly in his palm. He can feel it glowing, lightening the darkness.


End file.
